You Got A License For That Web Browser?

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According to a story on ITnews there’s some people arguing that it’s time to require a kind of “internet drivers license” before allowing people to go online for the first time.

Australia’s leading criminologist thinks online scams have escalated to such a point that first-time users of computers should have to earn a licence to surf the web.

While I’m glad that this is brewing in Australia and not here in the US, I’ve no doubt that there is plenty of people that would like to see it happen here.

If nothing else, something like that would be a genuine nightmare to enforce. For that matter, how would it be enforced? Would unlicensed surfers suddenly face having their blogs yanked from every website directory and pulled off of the server that’s hosting it?

Then there’s the privacy issue because some of that was talking about using biometrics, chips and what have you to essentially require a user to validate their identity before connecting to the net. Seems to me that this would only make it easier to track an individual’s activities and even block them from certain websites that the government has decided aren’t good for you.

Isn’t there enough of this kind of thing going on in places like China and Iran? Don’t we have enough domestic spying going on as it is?

I don’t like all the spying and such, like you mention, but we need to find a way to educate “newbies” better – cause they can get into a lot of trouble, very easy. Either be it by signing up to a weekly ringtone through facebook and not knowing how to get out of it again (a paid service, of course) or simply entering their credit card at “microsofts” website in order to avoid loosing their e-mail account…